Parks / Joshua Tree
When to visit
Joshua Tree.
The park drew an average of 2.9M recreation visits a year over 2016–2025. March is the busiest month at 13.4% of the year's visits, and July the quietest — 2.8× fewer people.
Crowds
March averages 388,663 recreation visits against 137,281 in July. Visit counts are the National Park Service's own monthly totals for the whole park, so unlike the weather figures below they describe every entrance and every trailhead at once.
Conditions through the year
July is the warmest month at 2,562 feet, averaging a daily high of 99°F, and January the coldest at 59°F with lows near 43°F. January is the wettest at 0.8 inches, May the driest at 0.1.
Daylight runs from 9h 54m in December to 14h 24m in June, a difference of 4h 30m of usable time in a day.
No month in the record averages a day of measurable snowfall at that point.
Those temperatures come from a reanalysis grid cell centred at 2,562 feet. A park that spans a range of elevations is warmer in some places and colder in others than one cell can show, and most parks span a wide one. Read the month-to-month shape — which months run warm, wet or snowy relative to each other — rather than any single figure as the temperature you will meet at a given trailhead.
Every month
| Month | High | Low | Wet days | Snow days | Daylight | Visits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 59° | 43° | 4 | 0 | 10h 12m | 251,809 |
| February | 62° | 45° | 2 | 0 | 11h 0m | 281,969 |
| March | 67° | 48° | 3 | 0 | 12h 0m | 388,663 |
| April | 77° | 56° | 1 | 0 | 13h 6m | 312,377 |
| May | 83° | 62° | 1 | 0 | 13h 54m | 229,903 |
| June | 95° | 73° | 1 | 0 | 14h 24m | 164,155 |
| July | 99° | 79° | 1 | 0 | 14h 6m | 137,281 |
| August | 97° | 77° | 3 | 0 | 13h 24m | 138,853 |
| September | 90° | 70° | 2 | 0 | 12h 24m | 160,094 |
| October | 80° | 61° | 1 | 0 | 11h 18m | 219,736 |
| November | 68° | 51° | 1 | 0 | 10h 24m | 307,070 |
| December | 61° | 45° | 2 | 0 | 9h 54m | 308,789 |
Averages over 10 years, 2016–2025. Wet days count days with at least 0.04″ of precipitation; snow days at least 0.4″ of snowfall.
There is no best month here
This page does not pick one. Crowds and weather alone cannot: in the desert parks the emptiest months are empty because the heat is dangerous, and in the mountain parks the quietest ones are quiet because the roads are shut. What a month has usually been like and what it will be like on your date are also different claims — for the second, the planner reads the live seven-day forecast and the park's own notices.
ParkReady is independent and is not affiliated with the National Park Service. Road, trail and campground status comes from the park, and the park is the only authority on it.
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